Reliving memories at St. Martha's

Every Wednesday, an 82-year-old man carrying a black bag comes into the hospital, minutes before what he calls high noon. As he makes his way through the front lobby, and staff ask him: “What did you bring this week?”

He takes his coat and gloves off, leaving them outside the double doors leading into St. Martha’s Place. He reaches into the bag and pulls out an object, much like a magician after performing a trick that ends with a bouquet or a rabbit in his grasp. Because what longtime Banffite Lorne Cooley does for the patients of the continuing care unit is nothing short of magic: he brings a spark back into sometimes faraway eyes and often, he helps them recall clear memories that were, until that moment, foggy with old age. It’s noon on the dot, so about 20 St. Martha’s residents are sitting at tables ready for lunch, when Cooley comes around with whatever trinket, treasure, or talisman he has brought to show them that day.

“Hello! Good morning, do you know what this is? Do you remember this?”

Cooley has presented everything from carvings of animals, a car horn off a Ford Model T to the top of a lightning rod off his grandparent’s barn built in 1921, and two different old school styles of toasters, which he opted to show on this particular Wednesday.

He jokes with the patients — that over time he has come to call friends, especially a fellow named Howard and a particularly smiley lady he affectionately calls Huggy Betty — by asking each one he shows the toasters to, “Want a piece of toast for lunch?”

In one hand Cooley has a Hotpoint electric toaster and in the other he has two trays attached together, which is what he uses at his cabin in B.C. to warm bread over a fire.

One patient rubs his finger against the surface of the handheld toaster and although he can’t articulate it with words, the presence of the toaster that Cooley rescued from an abandoned cabin 50 years ago has perhaps triggered a flashback. The patient’s attention is on Cooley and he’s trying to speak.

“Even if you can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, we can remember when we were in our childhood. They get to relive their youth again with memories of how they were raised and where they were raised,” Cooley said of sharing the antiques during the weekly impromptu show-n-tell.

This started about four years ago, when Cooley first started to visit a friend in the hospital. His friend was a carpenter, so Cooley would bring hand tools to talk about with his friend. Eventually, Cooley began to escort his friend to lunch and when he did, he got the idea to go from table to table, showing the rest of the residents what he had brought for the day.

“Some seniors perk up right away,” he said. “Some open right up and begin to discuss their own relation with an object.”

Manager of St. Martha’s Helen Gerrior said what Cooley does is wonderful.

“It brings so many memories back to the residents,” she said.

One of 44 grandchildren, Cooley has a knack for inheriting these objects in one way or another and going on 54 years in Banff, Cooley explained that this is one way he likes to contribute to his community.

“It’s my community… and you’ve got to help your community,” he said. “Besides, how do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?”